


Wedged Bear in Great Tightness

by Bettys_blend



Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: Awkward Conversations, Embarrassment, F/M, Fluffy despite it all, Human Disaster Cormoran Strike, Human Disaster Robin Ellacott, Not Britpicked, Revisionist reveals, Robin is a badass, Shameless literature and film allusions, Triggers, painful confessions, painful memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-16 17:49:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28960497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bettys_blend/pseuds/Bettys_blend
Summary: My take on the mysterious night at the Ritz.What would it take to get them to really talk to each other?TW: violence, references to violence and rape
Relationships: Robin Ellacott/Cormoran Strike
Comments: 32
Kudos: 55





	1. The Nature of the Problem

**Author's Note:**

> Hi all, I'm so happy I found this site. I've posted a few comments here and there but I'm an utter newbie and I'm still learning the jargon. Not sure what AO3 means, so if you tell me it's how you get from Oxford to Milton Keynes, I'd have no choice but to believe you.
> 
> Not beta-read because I don’t have any fish and this very concept confuses me.

Strike stumbled, rather than stepped, into Robin’s room, but she quickly dropped her hands from his shirt buttons to his hips and he was able to right himself. Between the champagne and the urgency of their kisses he found it astonishing that he was able to walk at all. He shrugged off his suit jacket but somehow it fell tangled around Robin’s heels, tripping her up for a change. Luckily for them both, she fell neatly onto the bed; happily for him, the bed didn’t break as she took him down with her. A very solid-looking double bed, he was pleased to note, taking up most of the space in the typically cramped London room.

He turned his attention to the delicious line of her clavicle, her whimpers spurring him on. Somehow he had lost his shirt already and her fingers were exploring his chest, tangling in his hair, grazing his nipples. He let out a shuddering breath that became a growl as her hand traced lower and began to undo his belt.

“Robin”- his voice was harsher than he had intended, and he paused and wet his lips- “are you sure?”

“Yes”, she answered simply, her own voice somewhat rough, “and take that leg off, if you need to- I was afraid of getting that bit wrong”.

He chuckled and rolled sideways. “You’ll see how much better it is with just the two of us,” he murmured, slipping his trousers down to grant access to the stump, before deftly kicking off trousers and leg all at once. At least, he hoped it looked deft because he was already wincing over that sleazy line. He vaguely recalled once having had a repertoire of moves intended to drive women mad. At this moment, he couldn’t remember a single one of them.

And in the meantime, Robin - _oh_ _good God-_ had managed to wriggle out of that blue dress and was pulling him back to her. A memory flashed across his mind, comet-bright, of staring at the outsized Toblerone bar his mother had brought him once after one of her overseas jaunts. He had been six, probably, and all he could think of was how to cram as much of it as possible into his mouth.

Unhelpful. Still, the trousers had come off and he had somehow fallen into or onto bed with the most...with the best...with Robin. There were no other words for Robin, and Strike, who had never feared the sea, clung to her like a drowning man to a broken spar as they kissed and explored, their tongues imitating the sensation caused by the champagne bubbles only an hour or so ago. He had tried to tell her how beautiful she was, but she didn’t seem inclined to let him talk.

And now _-oh holy fuck-_ she was very nearly naked and definitely hot and sighing beneath him. He ran his thumb up her cheek, craving the feel of her hair as the scent of Narciso swirled around them, perilous and unstoppable.

And then he was flying, launched upward, tipping sideways, catching his right shoulder painfully on the wall and slithering into the narrow space between it and the bed, stump side down. He registered a gasp that was almost a wail, followed by silence.

“Auggh... fuck,” he groaned, winded and shaken. “Robin?”

No answer. The bed was trembling right against his chest; only then did he realise just how firmly stuck he was.


	2. The cause of the problem

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am firmly of the belief that combining whump with smut produces a genre known as Whut?

From his narrow prison between the wall and the massive bed-frame, Strike assessed the situation; none of it was good. Robin had thrown him off with all of the strength in her shapely legs and for the life of him he couldn't work out why. She had kissed him on the pavement; she had kissed him in the taxi, hauled him in her front door, and essentially marched him to her bed before quite literally giving him the old heave-ho.

Maybe because she'd found a fat knackered old cripple underneath the nice suit? He tried not to let his mind go there but of course it did anyway.

"Robin”, he tried again miserably. “Please tell me I didn't hurt you. I just want to know you’ll be all right before...before I give you some space.” He propped himself up on his right elbow to crane over the side of the bed. He had fucked up, that much was clear, but how, exactly? It didn't add up.

A muffled sob, a desperate intake of breath. She seemed to be counting backwards from eight, again and again, and rocking slightly in the bed.

A wave of guilt and nausea and helplessness filled his battered chest and suddenly he was crying now too.“So fucking sorry...er...I never meant..." He trailed off and added, to no one in particular,"don’t think I can get up.”

"Right". It came out in a whisper. "Right".

The bed jostled; she had left it. There was a little click and a sliver of light reached him from down the hall. Strike reached for the foot of the bed with his toes and gave it an experimental shove. Nothing. It was a terrible angle to push from; even with his back firmly braced against the wall, he needed his missing foot for leverage. It was a heavy sodding wanking _wazzock_ of a bed, and he told it so. Or maybe he was talking to himself.

But Robin's footsteps were heading back to him already. When she spoke her voice was hoarse and brisk.

"We'd best get you up", she said in an oddly professional tone. He could just make out the shape of her at the foot of the bed in the dark. She had pulled on a longish pyjama tunic, and he found some consolation in the fact that his boxers were still on.

"Not sure how to do this", he mumbled, unable to meet her eyes. "No way you can pull me up from there. Not enough room to turn round if I shove down toward you. Maybe I can climb up...”

He hooked his knee over the side of the bed and pushed up as high as he could from his right arm. Robin went round the bed again, gripped the side with one hand to anchor herself, and hauled on his left arm and shoulder with the other. Nothing happened and Strike’s planking shoulder twinged ominously.

“Bad angle for me too”, she muttered, just as he grunted, “can’t get up high enough without the leg.”

“Oh!” she gasped, letting go. “Hold on, I can tunnel under you”.

And a moment later, he felt her slip her head and shoulders under his thigh; and with Strike keeping as much weight as possible on his good knee and calf, still hooked over the side of the bed, she worked her way under him until, by raising herself on all fours under his bruised hip, his lower half was high enough to allow him to roll back onto the bed.

As he caught his breath, he felt compelled to reach out, to praise her, to reassure. The teamwork and the physical contact had provided a brief, if surreal, return to intimacy, at least of the sort they had enjoyed before. He did not like the way she had withdrawn from him; he sensed that she might be on the edge of a breakdown, and while he tried never to compare Robin to Charlotte, the latter had primed him to be on the lookout for any hints at self-harm or self-sabotage.

"That was clever, well done."

“Least I could do”, she said quietly. “I’m terribly sorry. Are you badly hurt?”

That stilted professional voice again. She seemed to be looking at the wall.

“I’ll manage”, he said, sitting up.

She began to bustle about collecting his clothing and shoes far too efficiently, much too impersonally for his liking. “I’ll make some tea and we’ll see if you can walk.”

He knew he shouldn't leave her in this state, but if she wanted him gone, he had no choice. And he feared that he might never have another chance to talk to her properly.

Should he keep it light? “I’m seriously impressed, Ellacott. I know you’ve been hitting the gym hard, but you must be squatting 120 or more.”

She huffed and passed him his leg.

_Think, Strike. Don’t break the connection._


	3. The solution

Robin...” he tried again. “I’m sorry. I never, ever meant to scare you.”

She paused, stilled, stared him down at last with an intensity that was almost predatory. There followed the tensest pause of his lifetime before her words spilled out in a scream. “Me. Scared of _you_? That’s how well you fucking know me?!”

Somehow this was better than her fake PA voice. He forced himself to slow his breathing, willing her to do the same as he tried to read her in the gloom.

_Do not deny, do not prevaricate, do not escalate; solve the problem._

“So”, he ventured. “Er... not scared? But...panic attack?”

“Yes, and I’m bloody embarrassed, you... you numpty”, she spat, sitting back down hard on the bed with her back to him. “Out of nowhere. So stupid, telling myself for ages that we might have a chance...because it’s _you_...but it looks like this is my life now, I can't even..." she trailed off with a particularly noisy sob.

This, he could work with. Maybe. With luck. He concentrated on dressing as slowly as he could plausibly get away with.

“Ellacott...every moment I have spent in your company has been an absolute privilege and it would take more than a panic attack to scare me away. Maybe we could try your talking thing?”

“Please don’t think you have to let me down gently”, Robin ground out. “You are free to bugger off and shag beautiful women who don’t _assault_ you, who don’t have mystery triggers...

She stopped. “Oh god! Cormoran, I know what it was!”

Flushed with the excitement of finding, of discovering, of revealing, she sounded much more like herself again, even though her voice was thick and strained. “I didn’t have a bloody clue, at first, and that made me feel like I was going mad...just like when I was shut up at home in Masham. You scratched my neck with your watchband. I can’t stand the scrape of metal on my neck, not since, well, Uni. Matthew always left his watch on the entry table so it hadn’t happened before- not like that, anyway.But now that I think of it, even spiky necklaces make me jumpy, I’m really picky about what I put on. But I wasn't properly aware of it until now."

Overwhelmed, letting his head sink into his hands, Strike looked at the floor where he now had two feet, such as they were. "Fuck, Robin, I'm so sorry. Bastard had a knife, then?"

"That's just it. I don't bloody _know_. It came up during the trial and that barrister made me out to be a liar for noticing the vitiligo but not being sure about the knife. Thing is, when you can’t breathe, when a man is crushing your windpipe with his thumbs, what difference does a sodding knife make? It's not relevant."

Strike forced his head in her direction. It was probably too dark for her to see his eyes, and in any case, she wasn't looking at him.

“What weighed me down more than anything was feeling like I was losing my mind. I didn't know the answer to that one simple question and it ate me up inside. I had so many nightmares I lost track of my actual memories. And then Laing knifed me for real, and it made it all a hundred times worse. The dreams, and the flashbacks and the...confusion.”

Strike nodded and cleared his throat but the lump wouldn't subside. “Metal on the neck”, he said at last. “That’s not an irrational fear, Ellacott, it makes a fuckload of sense. I’m sorry I wasn’t more careful. To be honest, I got carried away...”

“I _meant_ for you to get carried away,” she interjected fiercely, recklessly. “I thought I was ready for...for the best sex ever. And I go and do that. To you! Ruined everything. If I was a horse you’d have to have me shot.”

Strike squinted at her, hunched over in the darkness. He ached all over and since he was fully dressed, he had no more excuses to stay; nevertheless, something she had just said had buoyed him up again.

“I see. I’m not sure that metaphor works for me. Did you have Angus shot? Or are you implying that I shag horses on my days off?”

A snotty gasp followed. “God, don’t make me laugh, Strike. Not now.”

“Well”, he reasoned, “I really, really don’t want to make you cry. And... whatever else... I couldn’t leave my best mate in a state, right? Because I will be here as long as you want me to be. Protect yourself by all means, if this doesn't feel right; run a mile if you have to, but don't do it to protect _me_."

“But this is serious!” she wailed. “It’s my stupid, malfunctioning body, and it lashed out and hurt you-”

“Hang on, Ellacott. First of all, didn’t I bash your nose in just a few months back? Not my finest hour, I'm sure. Second, I cannot have you thinking that I, of all people, wouldn’t understand about having a malfunctioning body."

In the confines of his own head, he allowed himself to say "and your so-called malfunctioning body is the most gorgeous thing I've ever seen", before ploughing on.

"D’you know what I’m going to do once I’m too well-known to be running surveillance in the streets? Lead a London Walk. Entitled, “Places Where Cormoran Strike has Fallen Down Like a Complete Tit.”

She rewarded him with a brief snort, but her voice was thick and choked. “Still not the same, though. You get to go brawling and fall down with your clothes on and your dignity intact. You’re not already vulnerable and in a total blind panic when it happens.”

Interrogation technique offered him no clues for how to handle this situation. He was going to have to go off-piste.

"If you're still so embarrassed, I'll tell you about what was almost the most embarrassing moment of my life. So we can be completely humiliated together. Happened to be on the drive to Devon.”

“What!” At last she turned to face him.

“You’re the detective, Ellacott. Did you never ask yourself why I didn’t try to take the wheel? Interfering boss man that I am?”

“Of course!” she gasped. “You had a panic attack. And you froze."

“Right in one. I couldn’t have reached out if our lives had actually depended on it. But it gets worse. If you had taken, say, just three seconds longer to come to a stop on the verge, I would almost definitely have shat myself. That, Ellacott, would have been humiliating, and I might have been stupid enough to sack you for witnessing it.”

She had to strain to hear him as he added, “Just now, even when you panicked, you reacted, you didn’t freeze. I'd say you have nothing to be ashamed of."

“That cost me a bit of effort”, she said ruefully. “I was gutted when I cleared off to the toilet, all I wanted to do was run out of the house and throw myself in front of a bus. But then”- barely audible- “I thought I could do better than that mad Charlotte Campbell and her stupid bloody dramas.”

Strike roared with laughter but cut it off short. “And you did, didn’t you? You always do. Feeling completely shit and you still came back to help me up. You’re worth twelve of her. Honestly,” he said, feeling his way into the abyss once more, “I would rather have tea and biscuits with you than sex with anyone else. I always thought starting over might not be easy for you, even on the off-chance that you could fancy me. I didn't have high hopes. So, whatever happens, when I look back on tonight, I'll remember how powerful and incredibly sexy that throw was. Only”- he screwed up his face as his vowels veered northward- “tooch painful on re-entreh”.

“Never do that again”, she said sternly, but she was laughing, now, really laughing, standing up and pulling him up to face her. “Come on, let’s get you your tea”.

“Let’s go soomwhere where there’s cheese”, he started to say, but her lips had suddenly found his again.

To silence his giddy nonsense, or for another reason entirely?

Maybe one day he'd solve that mystery, but right now, he was busy.


End file.
